Week 6 Reflection

I made two significant changes to my Google spreadsheet entries this week, both dealing with Virtual Virginia.  Over the past few weeks, I have gained a much clearer picture of what a virtual classroom would truly look like.  There would be plentiful student-student interaction, and the students would move through the course content and learning process together as a community of learners.  Looking at last week's examples and reading this week's selections gave me a concrete picture of what student-student interaction should look like online.

I now clearly recognize that Virtual Virginia offers virtual courses, not virtual classrooms.  The students work through the courses independently and little, if any, student-student interaction occurs.  Previously, I mistook VVa's requirement that students meet  pacing benchmarks to mean that students were class-paced and somewhat working together.  Now, I am fairly certain that students are self-paced, just within the required benchmarks that VVa has put into place to ensure that students complete the courses.

My overall view of the schools has not changed much, just come more clearly into focus.  From the start, I was fairly certain that neither VVa nor the Texas Connections Academy were taking full advantage of all the benefits that online education could offer.  I now understand that they simply aren't following the virtual classroom model and that I personally tend to favor this approach.  I do, however, recognize that there are advantages and disadvantages of both models.  I can appreciate that there is a need for virtual courses, which VVa and TCA are both filling.  Now I wonder if there are enough schools filling the virtual classroom model, and enough parent and student knowledge about which to choose.